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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Wine's Best Friend: Dark Chocolate

The world is awash in boutique wine, craft beers, herbs and
spices galore. Some call it the Food Network effect. One of wine’s best
friends, chocolate, has evolved with a similar Renaissance.

“I think over the past 15 years there has been an evolution
of foods, in general, and specialty foods,” said Indianapolis chocolatier
Elizabeth Garber. “It has happened to cheese, with craft beer, and even wine.
Chocolate has done that too.

“Chocolate has been around for ever and ever, but then you
started getting people specializing in the craft of chocolate and the higher
quality and the artistic side of chocolate. People started creating it more
visually and it became more about the palate. Now it’s what flavor profile is
in the chocolate and what works well with chocolate. Today you can find spices
and things like that in chocolate products.”

Wine and chocolate have been a natural pairing for a long,
long time but it’s not as simple as grabbing a bottle or wine and a chocolate
bar. There are far too many options not to explore the possibilities.

Chocolatier Elizabeth Garber

“There are levels and strengths in terms of sweetness,”
Garber said. “A white chocolate is going to be sweeter because it has a lot
more sugar in it.There are some grades
of milk chocolate that sweetness depends on the amount of sugar, milk and cacao
in the chocolate. Then you get in to darks which are going to get more
bittersweet, though you can have really sweet dark chocolate too.

The higher the percentage of cacao you have on a bar means
more cacao and less sugar. Garber explains the 80 percent you see on a
chocolate bar means 80 percent cacao and 20 percent sugar, cacao butter and
other stuff.”

And simply enough the more bold the chocolate, the bigger
red wine you’re going to want to pair with the sweet treat. Chocolate ranging
from 60-75 percent cacao pairs great with big red wines. Any bold red wine will
do but experimenting will help you find your favorites.

But chocolate today is more than a plain chocolate bar. “We
do a cinnamon basil and it might go well with one thing versus another,” Garber
said. “A milk chocolate could be paired with a Chardonnay or whites. Sometime
that sweet white wine with a honey/lavender truffle is a great pairing. A sweet
floral chocolate might pair better with white than just a red. So many people
just think red wine with chocolate but you can mix it up.”

Garber has been a chocolatier since 1994. She started in her
home and then opened a business just south of Indianapolis. She now has a
sizable shop in Indianapolis’ trendy Mass Ave district called “The BestChocolate in Town.”

Garber's truffles feature unique flavor combinations.

She mixes all sorts of spices, fruit, and even beer in her
truffles to challenge her customer’s base palate. “There has been this slow
evolution going on,” she said. “It’s sort of like jams and jelly; it used to be
just grape and strawberry. Now you have pepper jellies and all sorts of
combinations. So now chocolate has evolved and continues to expand in new
directions.

Flavored truffles give wine fans a chance to really
experiment. Boutique chocolate shops have popped up in cities of all size.
Chocolate and wine is a very seductive treat for Valentine’s Day!

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About Me

I write an every other week newspaper column about wines under $25 and feature education aspects for the novice wine drinker. The column "Grape Sense" appears in 22 newspapers in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan now reaching more than 300,000 homes monthly. I post those columns here and to the blog "Grape Sense."